The need to remove liquids from horizontal surfaces occurs in many varied contexts. Perhaps the most common is the drying of a floor which has become accidentally or intentionally wet due to washing or spilling. Often the age-old solution of simply waiting until the liquid dries is not practical, either due to the necessity of subsequent operation scheduling or safety. Numerous devices for picking up liquid from floors have been commercialized. They normally involve a vacuum system which causes a stream of incoming air to entrain the liquid on the floor, and a separating system for removing the liquid from the air stream before it reaches the vacuum source. Removing entrained liquid from a gas stream can be an extremely difficult operation particularly when the separation must be extremely complete to avoid deterioration of the vacuum source components. As a result, most devices which are designed to pick up the liquid from the floors involve complicated and expensive systems of tortuous paths, baffles and filters. These complex arrangements which appear necessary to provide the degree of separation required, result in a structure which is not only difficult and expensive to manufacture, but also difficult to use and maintain in a clean and sanitary condition.
In a different context, it is often necessary to remove a layer of liquid from the surface of another layer of liquid. A most dramatic example of this sort of problem is the spillage of oil on the surface of a body of water. Most of the solutions to the cleaning up of this spilled oil involve some sort of chemical destruction of the oil. This type of approach can be both extremely expensive, wasteful, and potentially capable of causing as many environmental difficulties as it cures. These and other difficulties experienced with the prior art devices and methods have been obviated in a novel manner by the present invention.
It is, therefore, an outstanding object of the invention to provide a device for effectively picking up liquid from a surface, where the surface is either solid or liquid.
Another object of this invention is the provision of a device which effectively separates entrained liquid from a moving gas stream.
A further object of the present invention is the provision of a gas-liquid separator which is simple and inexpensive to manufacture, use, and maintain.
It is another object of the instant invention to provide a gas-liquid separator in which pass-through of liquid to the exhaust source is strictly minimized.
A still further object of the invention is the provision of a gas-liquid separation device which is capable of a wide range of uses including removal of oil slicks from the surface of water.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a gas-liquid separator which is capable of feeding the liquid into a wide range of receptacles including commercial barrels.
With these and other objects in view, as will be apparent to those skilled in the art, the invention resides in the combination of parts set forth in the specification and covered by the claims appended hereto.